SELF-GOVERNMENT • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Self-government

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/sˈɛlfgˈəvərnmənt/ Listen

noun

Self-government n.

The act of governing one's self, or the state of being governed by one's self; self-control; self-command.

Hence, government of a community, state, or nation by the joint action of the mass of people constituting such a civil body; also, the state of being so governed; democratic government; democracy. "It is to self-government, the great principle of popular representation and administration, the system that lets in all to participate in the councels that are to assign the good or evil to all, that we may owe what we are and what we hope to be."

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Etymology of 'Self-government'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Self-government" Quotes from Famous Books

... was, and ever will be, the popular hero of the Corsicans. He fought their last battles for the national independence; moulded their wild aspirations for liberty and self-government into a constitutional form; administered affairs unselfishly, purely, justly; encouraged industry, and checked outrage. He was a man of the people, one of themselves, and he never ...

— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... dissenting sects being entirely composed of the less wealthy people; and these, by the bill for a general education, would be qualified to understand their rights, to maintain them, and to exercise with intelligence their parts in self-government: and all this would be effected, without the violation of a single natural right of any one individual citizen. To these, too, might be added, as a further security, the introduction of the trial by jury into the Chancery courts, which have ...

— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... to the higher interests of the nation as a whole, and national interests demand a change in electoral methods. For the disfranchisement of minorities often gives rise to serious difficulties. The elections which took place in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony,[12] after the grant of self-government in 1906, show how racial divisions are unduly emphasized by such disfranchisement. Only one—Barberton—of the twenty-six country constituencies of the Transvaal returned a member who did not owe allegiance to Het Volk, although the figures of the polls ...

— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys

... tropical islands, inhabited by many varying tribes, representing widely different stages of progress toward civilization. Our earnest effort is to help these people upward along the stony and difficult path that leads to self-government. We hope to make our administration of the islands honorable to our Nation by making it of the highest benefit to the Filipinos themselves; and as an earnest of what we intend to do, we point to what we ...

— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt

... application of the familiar principle of popular self-direction. It has always come to something in the way of a concessive or expedient mitigation of the antagonistic principle of personal authority. Where the forms of self-government or of individual self-direction have concessively been installed, under the Imperial rule, they have turned out to be an imitative structure with some shrewd provision for their coercion or inhibition at the discretion ...

— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

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